The Mental Game of Baseball
Question: In baseball, and all sports, we need to deal with and control our emotions. Control what we are thinking, and be the best we can on the field. Controlling them, what is the best way to do that?
Ken: If you break things down, keeping it simple, and do one thing at a time. Like I said, I am in control of myself. I have a plan. I trust what I got.
Self-control. Big part of it. When we look at being in control of ourselves. What a part of it involves is awareness. Recognition.
I see athletic performance like driving a car. You come to an intersection. There’s a light. If the light is green you go. If the light is yellow you better attend to the intersection. Check rear view mirror for police officers, and then make your decision of what you are going to do.
If the light turns red, you’ve got to stop. As an athlete you’ve got to know what happens to me when I start moving from green lights to yellow light, or to red lights.
On what you and I used to talk about with spinning. And if you catch it early, you spin out of control. And then you start giving at-bats away, games away, and you beat yourself.
The key is if I can recognize it. Under recognition I have to recognize these things in myself before it happens to me. What happens in my body; what happens to my thinking; what happens to any behavior. Do I quiet down with my behavior? Do I get internal? What happens is my thinking gets critical, judgements. Do I get angry? What happens in my body? Does my heart rate increase? Does muscle tension increase? Hands feel weird. All these factors play in. We need some of this arousal. But we don’t need too much.
I’m not talking about being relaxed and mellow here, because you are competing. We’re talking to controlled intensity. Everyone is little different where they need to be. The other thing, Chad, that comes to this; once I recognize it, then I’ve got to release it. I’ve got to have somewhere to let it go.
It may be stepping out of the batter’s box, undoing the batting glove. Let it go. Strap the glove back on. Maybe hitting the shoe. It may just be the distance you move away from home plate. Whatever the thing is, for you to recognize that I’m not where I should be right now. I’m letting this go, and then I’m regrouping. Getting myself back together.
Remember, you’ve got to be in control of yourself, before you can control your performance.
Your body language is huge. How you carry yourself. It’s the classic case of the kid who get in there, and he swings at his pitch and misses. He bangs the bat and he strikes out on a change-up.
The kid whose in there, swings at his pitch, misses it, bangs the bat, comes back. Calls time out. Takes a couple deep breaths. Who are you going to bet on? It’s a no brainer.
For the parents. How did your child work the process? Did they recognize the process?
Just because they take that bat, it doesn’t mean they are going to get a hit, drive in two runs, and be a hero.
This isn’t Disneyland. This is the real world. OK? As a parent, you can validate your son or daughter for the way they went about in getting themselves the best opportunity for success.
That’s the type of thinking that parents need to be attentive to. There results are going to take care of themselves. But if I can recognize where I’m at, I can do at least what I need to and regroup for the next pitch. That’s huge, because now I can think clearly.
For a pitcher. It’s pitch selection, pitch location, pitch execution.
But for hitters, its going to be what I am trying to do with this pitch? What pitch am I looking for? I want to square this up. There’s different levels so we know it gets complex.
Basically you are going in there with a plan, and when I have a plan then I am clear with what I am trying to do. Then I just trust myself. I trust my ability, and I trust my work because the trust gets down to when you get to the game. Do what you do in practice and training. You do not need to bring it up a level. That’s a victory. Do what you did.
If you can’t do it in practice, guess what? You go get blisters on your hand and you may find out you are not good enough.
Let’s do it in practice and bring that to the game. And you are going to do that pitch by pitch. Some of its going to go good, and some of it isn’t going to go well. But your job is to take what you got. If you’ve got 60%, then use 100% of the 60% and battle with that on the next pitch.
That’s what we are really talking of when we want to get the skill level up.